


Talking is cheap and your lies were expensive

by alltoowell



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alana Finds Out, F/M, Hannibal Rising References, I still do not approve of any ships in this show if you were wondering, mention of Mischa Lecter, mention of that scene in the season 2 trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:01:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoowell/pseuds/alltoowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alana eventually untangles herself (or is forcibly untangled) from Hannibal's web of deceit, but it's messier than you'd think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And you smiled the whole way through it, I guess maybe that's what's worse.

**Author's Note:**

> *nervous laugh* I don't know what this is. Well I do, actually, and that's a lot of unbetaed angst-- oops. 
> 
> Split into three parts: the first is the weakest in my opinion, so I encourage you to stick with it despite the shaky start. Also, it's technically a oneshot but it wound up too long for that so I chose to just divide it up for your sake as much as mine lol Canon is sort of scrapped, but meh I'm not trying to predict what's going to actually happen, you'll get the idea. 
> 
> Feedback is appreciated and Kudos' are adored!

The gun felt too heavy in her sweaty, shaking hands.

Her wrist was limp-- the weapon had almost slipped out of her grip twice already, and if the sickening smirk on Hannibal’s face was any kind of indication, her weakness hadn’t gone unnoticed-- and she was beyond tempted to just drop it, drop everything and run; keep running until she wouldn’t be able to hear her heart shattering above her own breathless panting.

He took a step closer.  She shut her eyes, touched a finger gingerly to the trigger.

She could do this, she thought. She had to-- she didn’t have a choice. It was a matter of life or death-- hers, this time-- and there was no time for any ridiculously sentimental thoughts.   


The lips currently turned up in mocking of her might have been the same ones that had so gently brushed over collarbone so many nights, and had passionately captured her own as though he revived her back to life when she’d been lost, but they were also the very same lips that had spoken an unmeasurable amount of lies; they were the same lips that had devoured the bodies of innocents, including Abigail Hobbs.

 He was a monster of the worst kind: one who had blended in among their social circle, at the FBI and, worst of all, in her life. An ever-reassuring presence as her mentor and friend, it stood to reason that she’d trusted him implicitly. She’d been lonely, isolated, angry, and of course he’d been the ultimate comfort-- with his kind compliments, his patient understanding and the welcoming warmth of his strong arms.

She’d been vulnerable, and he’d been all too happy to take her in, take her heart, take advantage.

 He’d manipulated her, that much was fairly obvious now, and she’d been so blind to it all, because she’d allowed herself to get so caught up in how wondrously empowering it felt to think she was loved by him. 

“Alana,” he said, accent in his voice so much more dominant when it tugged on the vowels in her name. “You and I both know you do not want to shoot me.”

Except she did. The only thing that might make her feel even a little better would be to see Hannibal in as much pain as she was. She might not have been capable of hurting him like that emotionally-- she doubted he even had a heart-- but he was not superhuman, and he was bound to feel some sort of physical agony.

She wanted to shoot him and she needed to, perhaps even more than she’d needed him in the first place. 

Maybe she didn’t necessarily _have_ to--- yes, Jack and Will would be here soon, but the resentment she harboured for them had not dimmed even slightly, and considering she’d been the one desperate enough to fall for Hannibal, naive enough to believe him unconditionally and plain stupid enough to have brought him into all of their lives, she figured she’d earned the right to have this end right here, right now, with just the two of them. 

Just once, she wanted to be the one in control.

Her time was limited and running out, so she chased away what thoughts she could. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mascara smudged and a faint cry even escaped her lips, but her positioning of the gun did not waver.

His dark eyes-- no longer the hypnotizing maroon she’d wanted to drown in, emptier now: unforgivingly empty and callous black holes, insights to his hell of a soul through the windows of the devil himself-- on her, studying her quietly but measuredly. He didn’t think she was strong enough to be the one to end this; he didn’t think she would be able to untangle herself from him emotionally for long enough to pull the trigger. He wasn’t going to waste his time and energy fighting with someone who was too weak to do any real damage.

He was wrong.

It would be easier with her eyes shut, yes, but she needed the visual proof. Voices outside startled her, but Hannibal made no move to get the door. It didn’t matter: it wasn’t a social call anyway. In a few minutes, Jack would be kicking the door down, Will hot on his heels, both with guns in their hands. It would get ugly: there would be blood a critical crimson, harsh yells and accusation. Screaming, crying on her part as she watched the three of them kill each other. When this was over, they would all come out of this wounded.

So instead, she opened her eyes wider and met his. A sharp intake of breath-- breathing steadier now she’d had a little time to compose and prepare-- and without saying a single word, she pulled the trigger.

 Or at least, that was how it should have been.


	2. She's got broken things were her heart should be

In reality, Alana hadn’t had a startling moment of realisation: there had been no string of evidence beyond Jack and Will’s circumstantial suspicions which she was blatantly ignoring for the sake of their reputations as much as Hannibal’s. The truth had not struck her like a bolt of lightning through a discovery that belonged to her; no anticipation, no fragmented heartbeat; no catching him the act.

It had been a Thursday much like any other.  She’d slept in a little later than usual, because now she did not have a pack of dogs howling in hunger as an alarm. When she was finally up and dressed, Alana got into her car and made the quiet drive to Quantico.   


She still found herself taking Will’s classes. He hadn’t returned to teaching, obviously, and although she had not been directly asked, it was an unspoken agreement. She did so more out of necessity-- because the trainees still needed to be taught in criminology-- and habit --because she was used to acting as Will’s damage control, the person who had to clean up the wreckage he left in his wake as he stormed through their lives-- than out of courtesy: after all, it wasn’t exactly like he was going out of his way to make things easier for _her_.

On this particular Thursday, she took his morning session, and then moved onto her own in the afternoon.  A lull in her schedule in combination with all of the ridiculously dramatic stories Freddie Lounds had in any way linked her with meant her patient load was kept fairly light, and thus allowed her to keep Mondays and Thursdays open for teaching.

Alana had the misfortune of running into Jack at the academy-- again, far from unusual or unexpected (she had a half a dozen unread emails in her inbox from him that she’d childishly marked as spam, and was sure his explanation for lurking in the hallways could be found somewhere among them, if she’d cared enough to search for it) but uncomfortable nonetheless. He didn’t linger to talk to her, and she was grateful he might actually have been taking the hint, choosing instead to nod once in her direction and proceed to walk briskly past when she did not return the gesture.

The rest of her work day was spent marking papers and pouring over textbooks. She busied herself updating her lexis on constantly evolving psychological terminology and eye-rolling her way through the latest issue of ‘Psychology Today.’ She occupied her thoughts as best she could, so that they wouldn’t risk gravitating towards the man whose classroom she occupied.

Logically, she knew she had sacrificed all right to worry about Will --and that he had long lost all deservedness of her pure, unadulterated concern-- but in the lapses between Hannibal and work, her mind would occasionally slip up and wonder.   


Alana left a half hour early, to beat the heavy rush hour traffic. She didn’t bother slipping out of her coat when she got in, simply reached for Applesauce’s lead as per the request of the hyper animal running excitedly between her legs.

Their walk was peaceful, but slightly longer than all their others. The winter chill in the air was beginning to lift, and Alana could hear the squeak of wet grass beneath her boots rather than the crush of snow. They went to a nearby field, empty and open, and played fetch with a branch she’d snapped from a nearby tree. When Alana called for the dog to come back, she did so while panting happily and waited obediently at her feet for Alana to readjust her lead.

The sun was setting as they arrived home. Applesauce retreated to Alana’s bed for a well-earned nap-- ‘no pets on the furniture’ was a rule Alana was dutifully trying to enforce, but was having very little success with-- while she filled her dish with water and her bowl with food. Then, she slipped into something that was not covered in dog fur and drove to Hannibal’s. 

He welcomed her inside with a tender kiss on the lips that had her entire body tingling. She loved the intimate warmth that came from his smile against her own.

They cooked together for a little while, exchanging idle but pleasant conversation and sweet teasings that had goosebumps of anticipation lining her arms. He asked her questions about her day, seemed genuinely interested as he sliced tomatoes with no concentration necessary.  

When he pulled her to him as dinner cooked in the oven, she shut her eyes and allowed every thought that did not revolve around the two of them to vanish as quickly as her heart beat when he touched her cheek. 

Dinner was peppered with laughter and compliments. She relished the way he looked at her: as if she were on a pedestal, as if she were worth admiring.

They cleared up after desert: he washed, she dried, and they fell into a comfortable silence while opera music played from the radio in the dining room. She was much too lost in her thoughts-- considering how best to suggest they take some much-deserved and overdue holiday time and run away, leave everything (and everyone) behind for just a few days; devote time to getting lost somewhere, getting lost in each other-- to realise Hannibal was lost in his own.

Afterwards, they were relaxing on the sofa, her head anchored against his chest-- the perfect position to hear his heart beating in time with her contented breathing. This was it, she decided:  this was perfection and safety and closure; this was love and hope; this was all she wanted for the rest of her life. 

As if he could read her mind, Hannibal chose that moment to ease her off of him. She blinked expectantly, ready to be lead to bed by a smooth palm tangling with her own, but instead he met her eyes directly, gaze not wavering and told her he was a killer. 

She wrongly assumed he was referring to what had happened almost a year ago-- the incident with Tobias Budge and Franklin—exaggerated by the accusation thrown his way as a result of his therapy with Will, and so immediately she shook her head, moving closer once more and resting her hands on his shoulders.

“Hannibal, all you have ever done is defend yourself,” she said, eyes widening in surprise as he carefully withdrew her hands from touching him.

“Alana, I am the Chesapeake Ripper,” said slowly, with precision, like he did most things. Perhaps patronisingly slow, but she wasn’t analysing his tone: the words were enough.

She might have laughed if it hadn’t been such a sore spot; if he had been impersonating anyone else but the person Will and Jack continued to tell her he was as part of this joke. “That’s not funny,” she replied, reaching for her glass of wine and resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

His hand on her wrist had her pausing. “You really shouldn’t drink any more tonight.” That was as good as saying: _you're driving yourself home._ Alana felt her heart twist as she yanked herself out of his touch: was this the most elaborate break-up ever? “I understand this is difficult for you to comprehend--”

“Are you breaking up with me?” She lifted her chin a fraction, trying to convey an element of composure she did not currently feel. She could do this: she could hear this and not fall to pieces in front of him.

“Well, I am planning to leave,” words chosen carefully, as though he were explaining this to an emotionally damaged patient. He frowned, evidence he found her reaction troubling. “Alana, I don’t think you’re hearing me correctly.”

“This isn’t funny,” she repeated, an automatic response. Her mind frantically replayed the wrong words: _I am planning to leave._

“It is no longer wise for me to stay here,” Hannibal continued, as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “I have come to the decision that it is truly best if I leave.”

“Best for who?” She hadn’t meant to speak a thought that bled such hurt, but the words and the resentment had seeped out of her before she could stop them.  A familiar sting of abandonment had her eyes filling with tears. 

Didn’t he _understand_? He couldn’t leave her: he was all she had. 

“Myself,” he said frankly, but he kindly added, “and you, as well, I believe.”

“You can’t just... _go_. Hannibal--” her voice hitched, and she ducked her head, embarrassed, before she could finish with _I need you too much_.

“Alana, I am a murderer. I am the murderer we have all been hunting. You must have grasped that by now, surely.”

She hadn’t. She wouldn’t. His words were not registering in her mind. Why was he changing the subject? 

“Take me with you,” she whispered, and the look he gave her-- a predator feeling sorry for his weak prey-- had her clamping her hand over her mouth.

“I am the Chesapeake Ripper,” he said again, his voice suddenly seeming too loud and unrelenting.

She covered her ears, shook her head. “Hannibal, stop.”

“I have killed many. I will kill again.” Repeating it to make her believe, rather than being intentionally cruel, but it had that effect regardless of his intentions.

“ _Stop_.” A dream, obviously-- a _nightmare._ This simply wasn’t happening. The man she’d fallen for was not a serial killer. She couldn’t have been this wrong. She shut her eyes tightly so she wouldn’t need to look at him as he tore her apart.

“I am exactly as Jack and Will have warned.”

“ _Stop!”_ Her request came out as more of a desperate plea than an authoritive command.

Now that she opened her eyes, Hannibal blinked at her and cleared his throat. “It might be better if you leave now,” he suggested evenly.

It was in actuality the very last thing she wanted to do, but her cheeks were burning with his rejection and her mind was reeling too fast to continue anything resembling a conversation and bile was rising in her throat, so she complied and got to her feet shakily.

She allowed him to help her into her coat, standing numbly in his doorway as he placed a kiss to her forehead and assured her he would call before he left. Her hands wanted to fist his shirt and pull him closer, so that the space and the words and the newly-placed barriers between them no longer mattered, but she didn’t.

The cold wind struck her face and she thought of her walk with the dog earlier, when she’d caught glimpses of daffodils blossoming and hummed along to the song of the returning birds. She wondered how your life could change so horrifically in just a few hours.

When she got to her car and looked back, Hannibal’s door was already firmly shut.   


* * *

 

She’d had to pull over three times on the drive home. 

Questions would strike her the moment she started up the ignition. Why had he told her and then allowed her to leave? Why hadn’t he killed her there and then? Didn’t he expect her to call Jack and tell him? Was that what he wanted?

 She considered it. Even took her cell phone out more than once and rested it on her knee, staring into the darkness of the night and trying to string together the words that would seal the destruction of her life. With her confession of Hannibal’s, she could end set in motion the events that would end this.

Except she couldn’t. Because words, regardless of what accusation or evidence they held, would not undo any of the damage. Locking Hannibal up might save lives, give Will righteousness and Jack relief, but it would not banish the searing pain in her chest. It would not change the fact that tomorrow, she would wake up alone, all of her bridges burned to ash and her trust in pieces, yet still be expected to pick herself up and put all of this-- all of them-- back together.

When she finally got home, Applesauce was hiding behind her paws on the couch. She barked once, a welcome, and then proceeded to rub her head against Alana’s hip in an attempt at offering comfort she sensed was obviously needed.

Alana didn’t sleep much that night. When she did, she saw bodies butchered in Hannibal’s kitchen, herself holding the knife, his apron hanging loosely on her hips. She woke up with the metallic taste of blood on her tongue, and panicked, before realizing she’d accidentally bitten the inside her mouth while dreaming.

The next day, she called in sick to work. It wasn’t much of a lie, really, given that she’d woken up and immediately her stomach had lurched. She’d vomited away most of the morning and, hopefully, most of what Hannibal had served her of late.

One moment she was horrified, the next she was mournful. Anger turned to tears. The only thing constant in how she felt was the overwhelming regret that he hadn’t killed her the night before: because at least the murder and mutilation would render her incapable of placing such value on any emotional agony.

Friday night was spent online, researching cannibalism in psychiatry terms. There was so much she didn’t know, so much she hadn’t considered. For an hour or two, she’d allowed herself to believe that fixing him might fix their relationship, fix her in turn-- the way it hadn’t with Will.  

The more she tried to diagnose him, the more confused she herself felt. She wondered if you could lose yourself to searching for shreds of humanity in someone. 

Disgust came next: she went into the bathroom, turned the shower up as high as it would go and scrubbed her skin until it was red and raw; until every trace of his touch was burned away by the hot water and steam. She forced herself to throw up again, although there really wasn’t much left inside her but disappointment, and she let herself think that getting rid of his memory would really be that easy. That removing him from her life could be a physical process; one she could handle.

On Saturday morning, Will called her. She didn’t answer and he didn’t leave a message.

He probably assumed she was with Hannibal-- resentful perhaps that she did not take the call anyway, or infuriated by the fact she was with him in the first place. She’d given up trying to guess what Will was thinking-- had stopped trying to feel the pain and betrayal pulsing through his veins when it came to her-- and she was slowly training herself not to care.

It was surprisingly easy now that she was wounded too.

She could have answered and told him the truth, but she wasn’t ready to say any of it out loud. He wouldn’t say ‘ _I told you so’_ but the implication would still be there, in the spaces between their respective apologies. They might not acknowledge her mistakes, but now they _both_ had to live with the consequences. 

Alternatively, she could have lied-- pretended everything was just fine, that she was spending the day with Hannibal and reaffirm that he needed to concentrate on himself-- but it would have ended with them arguing. Besides, it seemed like it had been so long since she’d used her voice, she didn’t know if she could really trust herself to speak.

Considered calling Hannibal instead. She had questions now: how many victims exactly and when did it all start and what could she say or do to make him want to stop. She had a thousand variations of ‘why’ floating around in her mind, but the question that she really wanted answered was something along the lines of _did you ever even love me at all_? despite how selfishly ridiculous she knew it was of her to even think like that.

People were dead, lives lost that she could have saved-- for all she knew, he could be killing again as she cried herself to sleep-- but her priories were focused on how he’d hurt _her_. 

Self-loathing ought to come easier than self-pity, she told herself. 

She took the dog for a walk that was more of a run, until the sky was darkening and rain was falling and they were both exhausted.

She logged onto her laptop to check Tattle Crime, in case Hannibal’s lies had crumbled while she hid herself away. A quick search of his name told her that no, as far as the world was concerned, he was nothing more than the much revered and unjustly accused psychiatrist of a very unstable Will Graham.

A notification informed her she had four new emails. One from a shopping website, sales and latest offers and Alana couldn’t have cared less if she tried; one from a colleague at the academy who wanted to discuss a student who was visibly in need of some sort of physiological help; one from another student, Carrie, who’d been called home on a family emergency, along with an attachment of last week’s assignment; one from Jack, telling her he needed her input on a case, an insistence that this truly was his last resort, suggesting that both Will and Hannibal had uncharacteristically declined.

Well, Will was preparing for a reckoning; Hannibal was preparing to leave. Apparently it was a busy task which took a lot of careful planning, to be a man in Alana’s life who disappointed her.

She closed her inbox without replying to Jack, for his sake as much as her own. The response he would receive would be anger that shouldn’t have been directed his way, despite the blame she did still attribute to him.

She slept through the night and didn’t remember what she dreamt. Still, when she woke up, her pillow was wet from crying.

Sunday afternoon, Hannibal was at her door in his fanciest overcoat, smelling of blood. The hum of his car ignition was all the confirmation she needed that this was a fleeting visit.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, but she was not afraid. Hurt, still; angry, yes, and she would be forever-- but she wasn’t scared of what he might do to her.

“Do I need to?” Hannibal said, cupping her face with his hand like he had so many times before. This time, his touch was cold. When she didn’t answer-- _couldn’t_ answer-- his dark eyes softened. “I came to say goodbye.”

“You don’t love me,” she said, voice shaking with raw honesty and the hurt that inevitably came with it. “You’re not capable of loving anything.”

This struck a nerve-- too similar to something he had heard before, perhaps, if the flicker of grief that illuminated his features was any indication-- and he took a step back. His eyes narrowed, but he did not make any move to hurt her. 

“I care for you,” he decided, with obvious difficulty, after a long pause. “You were a good friend to me for some time.”

If this was what he did to his friends, Alana didn’t want to know what agony this man was capable of inflicting upon his enemies.

“You used me.” Her accusation did not generate a reaction; she only half-expected it to.

“You were caught in the crossfire,” Hannibal admitted, like his phrasing did not suggest he had knowingly burned her. “It was not my original intention.”

Alana looked past him to where his car was parked in her driveway. “Where will you go?”

Hannibal sighed, a teacher dealing with a disobedient pupil. The image may once have turned her on: now, it made her feel nauseous. “You know I will not tell you.”

“In case I tell Jack,” she said frankly, folding her arms across her chest, praying it made her look stronger than she felt.

“In case I incriminate you further,” Hannibal elaborated, and it was supposed to make her feel better, but it didn’t. In a softer tone, he added, “In case you follow.”

“I wouldn’t,” she replied tightly, but Alana didn’t even believe that herself. If her pride was not all she had left, she may have gotten to her knees that second and begged him to take her with him-- because even after all of this, she didn’t hate him, and she knew she didn’t belong here with all of the people who did, who would. 

There was no telling what she might have done to numb her pain. If following him was an option, she certainly would have considered it.

“I will not take that risk.” Hannibal took a step back again, distancing them, as though that was really necessary. “I extended the courtesy of telling you myself, of allowing you time to prepare. I would appreciate the same courtesy returned, through a head-start, Alana.”

For some reason, it was this request that had her shaking with fury.  As though he had flipped a switch, Alana cracked.

“I don’t owe you a thing,” she howled, striking out at his chest. “I could call Jack right now and have you arrested. Tell him you have a gun…get you shot on the scene.” A sob escaped her lips as his hands came around her wrists, holding her back, with an empty expression on his face that she couldn’t read. “It’s no more than what you deserve,” she spat out bitterly.

“But you won’t,” he said, gentle, no hint of threat or mocking that she could detect.

“I _should_.”

“Perhaps. But in exchange for your ignorance I will grant you anonymity.” It was such a disgusting bargain, a childish, _you keep my secrets, I’ll keep yours._

She pulled back from him and forced herself to stand a little straighter, despite the tears still streaking her cheeks. “ _I_ have nothing to hide.” 

“You have known for four days. Would you care to explain to Jack why you chose to sit on the information, rather than telling him I had confessed to you?” She knew what he was implying: that her silence would make her look suspicious, a partner in his crimes just as Abigail had been to her father’s. For all Alana knew, he had the ability to prove it too, given he’d already framed two other people for his crimes. The undertone of this conversation was quite clear: _if you choose to be the one to drag me down, I could take you with me._

He didn’t actually have any proof that she hadn’t told Jack. It wasn’t like her word would suddenly be taken as Gospel, and agents would have swarmed Hannibal’s home. There wasn’t the evidence to arrest him; at most, Jack might have asked him a few more questions, tried harder to provoke him to another confession--one that could be recorded.

Still, there was no point denying her silence to Hannibal, and she didn’t deserve to hide behind excuses with Jack.

It hadn’t been shock and it hadn’t been fear that had her waiting Hannibal out. It had been the blind hope that he would show up here and change his mind, take her with him, and she was too ashamed of that motive to ever admit it aloud.

With Hannibal, she didn’t need to. He could read her too well. She suddenly realised how horribly unbalanced their entire relationship had been; how easily she’d surrendered the upper hand and how readily she’d given herself to him to be manipulated.

This could have lasted five years; this could have lasted forever, but she would have spent their life together trying to decipher somebody with too many walls, too many layers, too many faces.

She would never be enough for him, and he would always be too much for her, which was why she took a step back herself, and briefly looked up to meet his eye.   


“Go,” she croaked, and with that he gifted her with one final kindness. A fleeting kiss tasting of goodbye and sorrow, that would linger on her lips for just as long as it took him to walk away from her, murmuring her name one final time as he did so, get into his car, and pull out of her driveway without looking back once.   


When he was gone, she went back inside and practiced saying the words, ‘ _I hate you,_ ’ aloud until she could convince herself she meant it.  



	3. I'll be OK (is that what you want me to say?) It's called breakup, cause it's broken.

When Jack called her, four days later, and told her they’d arrested Hannibal, she pretended to be completely gobsmacked. 

He had his suspicions, probably, about the timing of their ‘amicable breakup’ but he had the consideration to put off interrogating her for another time.  

Alana cried on the phone because she knew that was what he expected her to do: she denied the truth over and over again, stopping only when he interrupted to tell her Will was being brought to the ER following a final, near-fatal altercation with the Ripper.

She met Jack in the hospital waiting room and he apologized for not killing Hannibal on the spot, for not being able to end this like he should have, and she let him believe that the news was an immense disappointment but not at all a relief.

Gradually, she was given more and more insight into all she had missed while she’d been buried in her own oblivion. The night Hannibal had kissed her goodbye, Jack had been unconscious on his living room floor after an altercation. When asked if she’d heard from Hannibal since that morning, she lied and said they had not spoken since the Thursday night.

Over the days that followed, Jack interviewed Hannibal many times. Occasionally, she listened in, but she did not ask to talk to him herself, and Jack didn’t offer. She was a brief mention in conversation as they spoke, but much of what they said focused on his relationship Will and, of course, Hannibal’s many victims.

Sometimes she was grateful for this; sometimes, it made her want to punch through the glass just to get their attention, to remind them both that she was there too, that she had been a victim as much as anybody else even if they all seemed content with the fact she’d made her own bed, dug her own grave. 

Hannibal stuck to his word: he said nothing to suggest she had known and he did not lie and say she had been involved in any way. He took all blame with a charming smirk, and countered all of Jack’s accusations with quirky one-liners. 

There was talk of shipping him to psychiatric hospital out of state, but Alana doubted it held much merit. If they were in the mood for wagering bets, hers would be that his residence for the foreseeable future would be Baltimore’s State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It was fitting, she supposed, and she knew both Chilton and Will would appreciate the poetry of it all: even if one was dead and the other not far from it.

She continued to keep up appearances even when Freddie Lounds labelled them all ‘survivors’ which was likely the least fitting description of herself that Alana had ever heard: she took a career break that nobody questioned, put in the expected amount of time at Will’s bedside, welcomed the distraction of the pack’s return to her home with dog treats and chew toys. 

Will eventually woke up and Alana was quick to assure him it was all over, even though it wasn’t.  She spent ten consecutive days apologizing, despite the fact he fervently continued to brush off any blame she’d had in Hannibal’s actions.

He discharged himself from hospital two weeks too early, and she insisted he stay with her while he fully recovered. She used the excuse of the dogs, because she didn’t want to admit that being alone after the intimacy she’d thought she had with Hannibal was the cruelest punishment of all. 

When he heard her crying in the middle of the night and got up to comfort her, she let him think it was the guilt gnawing at her, and not the fact she was stupid enough to miss the cannibal she’d fallen for, the murderer who’d tried to destroy Will’s life and then take it away when all else failed.

It was easier to have Will believe she was wallowing in guilt than it was to explain that despite all Hannibal had done, she was still grieving him hopelessly.

Months passed. Past victims and missing people were attributed to being victims of Hannibal-- some he acknowledged, some he denied. He made no request to see Alana, and although she drove down to the hospital at least once a week, she did not allow herself to go in.

Will moved out of Alana’s house after trying to kiss her and the argument which pursued.  

Three weeks later she was on his front porch in the middle of the night in the pouring rain, too drunk to realize that driving all the way out there intoxicated and numbing the pain with alcohol was a terrible idea, and he was ushering her inside and trying to comfort her when he couldn’t. She came onto him because she knew that she could-- wanting to feel filled after Hannibal had left her so empty, but she woke up on his couch full-clothed with a blanket draped over her shoulders and a dog at her feet. She swore it wouldn’t happen again, but it did, over and over, until Will made the decision to leave Virginia. 

He emailed her bi-weekly. Sometimes she replied; more often than that she did not.

Jack stopped emailing her with updates on Hannibal and cases and found another psychiatrist to help with profiling. Bella died, Alana went to the funeral. Afterward, they sat together in his kitchen and cried until all of his other relatives and friends had left and the sun outside was beginning to come up.

She stopped seeing patients: most had withdrawn after the discovery that Hannibal had not only been her boyfriend, but her mentor as well. It seemed her very career was in question, her professional judgement in doubt, and Alana had by then learned it was better to disengage intentionally before you got shoved, so she stopped waiting around for the rejection.

She taught full time at the academy instead, because the trainee’s looked at her like she knew what she was talking about after her own first-hand experiences.

Eventually, she reached the point where smiling and laughing did not pain her; she stopped waking up at midnight with Hannibal’s name on her lips, the last time he kissed her burned into her mind.

She went out for drinks with colleagues but called it a night before reality began to blur; she picked up the phone one day of her own violation and called Will simply because she wanted to hear his voice, and when he told her he’d met somebody out in Florida who made him forget, who made him laugh again, she meant it when she said she was happy for him.

She sent Jack a Christmas card that had her new email address on it, with the promise that she was still here if he needed her.

A year to the day after Hannibal told her the truth, she drove out to Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and turned around and drove back again, without pulling in. With some careful research and one reluctant phone call to Freddie Lounds which felt a lot like selling her soul to the devil, Alana managed to find the headstone Hannibal had long ago paid to have cemented with his sister’s name engraved on it. It was ceremonious purely, likely an attempt of keeping her memory close when their home where she had died was so far away-- and from what the newspapers suggested, there probably wasn’t enough of the child left to bury.

Her death did not justify the things he had done-- he had never used it as an excuse, so Alana refused to -- but it went some way to explaining his thought process. Or maybe Alana simply hoped it did, because that way Hannibal was a puzzle that could one day be fixed, even if it would have to be by somebody who wasn’t her.

The flowers she brought with her to the graveyard were white roses-- representing the childish purity that Mischa had had, the same innocence stolen from Hannibal. The fact they indicated beauty or love that was fleeting, or that they reminded Alana of a clean slate, may have also had some bearing on her choice, however subconscious. 

She had not known Hannibal as an older brother; had not witnessed him with a child beyond what her most dramatic dreams supplied while they were seeing each other, when she had been fooling herself into believing they had a future together. She imagined he had been remarkable with his sister, nonetheless. Captivating and protective and gentle. All qualities she had seen him exhibit: at dinner parties, with Abigail, with her. 

Those were the parts of Hannibal she chose to remember, when his name flashed up on a news channel or circled around the halls of the bureau or academy. She learned it was much better to forget all the horrendous parts of him than it was to punish herself for remembering all the reasons he’d been so easy to love. 

She tasked herself as the keeper of the happier memories that involved Hannibal, to keep the man she’d loved alive and to keep herself sane—as it turned out, it wasn’t nearly as difficult as she expected it to be.

It would take time, but part of dealing with and moving past what had happened involved forgiveness. She couldn’t offer it to him directly yet-- doubted she would be able to face him ever again-- but one day she hoped she’d have the strength, the words and the heart to write him a letter. Perhaps by then she would know what to say that might give her closure, even if he didn’t need it.

For now, her only show of emotion for him would be the continued leaving of flowers for Mischa, a gesture that he would likely never know about. That didn’t matter: she wasn’t doing it for recognition.

It was recovery.  


End file.
